Today on the U-Bahn I'm sitting in the seat facing the glass by the doors. A girl about 18 comes in, animatedly talking on her cell phone, and stands right on the other side of the glass from me. The doors shut behind her, the train starts to go. Milky skin with blushing cheeks, black hair possibly dyed, nice features, a stud through her lower lip on the right side where I observe the slightly chapped skin of the hole. She gestures with her right hand and her voice reaches me over the noise of the train as she exclaims in German, "Right into the room! Right into the room!" The fingers of the hand are rigid, the palm flat, emphasizing how direct the movement into the room was. Part of her puffy blue winter coat is flattened against the glass in front of me. As she talks, she absentmindedly picks at an official sticker next to the door with her fingernail. The conversation ends and she holds her position, looking out the window at the darkness speeding by between Westbahnhof and Burggasse, and looking at her reflection in the window. Her right hand rests on the bar next to the door, the nails short but not badly bitten, the cuticles slightly unruly, the skin pink and yellow in the fluorescent light. Her fingers, whose endless history vanishes into the dawn of her infancy; her fingers, which have ways and habits and knowledge, go back to picking at the sticker, peeling the top left corner down, and tugging at it. An older man and I are both watching her do this. Perhaps he, too, is thinking about telling her to stop. But she's not to blame: it's only that she has thoughts, and hands, and fingers.

6:18 a.m., the sun hasn't yet risen on the dead and the living here, two red apples, black coffee, no milk, cream in the fridge is spoiled, cats roar, cars glide outside, knuckles hurt, mind is curious to read e-mails and internet news, wife is sleeping, cold air on my heels slept well all night after dropping off the rented bmw must have a look in the mirror and trim sideburns before going out to teach english verb tenses in the south of the country the day before yesterday, we buried the urn with my father-in-law’s ashes in the tiny cemetery next to the village church sunlight in our eyes amid the pretty graves near the mountains the young priest seemed sincere in his curious costume, as he had during the funeral service nine days earlier; he said prayers in german and slovenian; we were all to love one another in jesus’ name a big fight over money came later, around the table at home at the cemetery though, we all (priest, widow, son, three daughters, three sons-in-law) sprinkled holy water on the glossy black and gold urn where it lay like a dinosaur egg in an earth nest our father who art in heaven

Just before sunset,
over the gray-green mountains
fly low yellow clouds.

Oh, that's the way,
uh-huh, uh-huh,
I like it,
uh-huh, uh-huh,
that's the way,
uh-huh, uh-huh,
I like it.